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<DIV id=storyDate-Links><SPAN class=pubDate>Posted on Wed, Mar. 30, 2011</SPAN>
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<H2 id=storyTitle>Donald Trump and the birthers</H2>
<P class=byline>By Leonard Pitts Jr.<BR><A
href="mailto:lpitts@MiamiHerald.com">lpitts@MiamiHerald.com</A> </P>
<DIV id=storyBody>Donald Trump doesn’t like “birthers.” He calls the word
“unfair’’ to people who don’t believe President Obama was born in the USA.
<P>Very well, then. If not birthers, how about if we call them “morons?’’ How
about ‘‘jackasses,” “imbeciles,” “idiots’’ or “doofuses?” How about “pinheads’’—
or would that require a royalty to Bill O’Reilly?</P>
<P>I’m sorry, dear reader. Forgive me. Generally speaking, I am not much for
name calling. </P>
<P>It lowers the level of discourse, it forestalls thoughtful response and it
does not suggest an excess of class. Where the birthers are concerned, however,
the level of discourse is already lower than Neptune’s basement, a thoughtful
response is about as likely as Miami snow on the Fourth of July, and I will just
have to chance the loss of class. </P>
<P>As mama used to say, enough is enough and too much stinks. </P>
<P>A 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 20 percent of all Americans
and <SPAN class=italic>30 percent </SPAN>of tea partiers believe the president
was not born here. In recent days, Trump, the reality-show impresario and human
punch line who’s been threatening to run for president, has added himself to
their number. For that, he drew a sharp rebuke from Whoopi Goldberg on <SPAN
class=italic>The View</SPAN>. When, she demanded, has any white president ever
been asked to show his birth certificate? </P>
<P>Let the church say amen. So it is time to call this birther nonsense what it
is — not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.</P>
<P>And, with apologies to the late James Brown, please, please, <SPAN
class=italic>please</SPAN>, anyone who is so inclined: Spare me the e-mails
where you soliloquize like Hamlet, the back of your hand pressed to your
forehead, eyes turned heavenward, as you moan how it is impossible to criticize
this president without being accused of racism.</P>
<P>Criticize him to your heart’s content. Give him hell over Libya. Blast him
about Guantánamo. Knock him silly on healthcare reform. He is the president;
taking abuse is part of his job description.</P>
<P>But this ongoing birther garbage, like the ongoing controversy about his
supposed secret Muslim identity — is not about criticism. It is not about what
he has done but, rather, what he is. </P>
<P>Like “state’s rights,” these controversies are a code, a dog whistle for
those with ears to hear. They provide euphemistic cover for those who want to
express alarm over the raw newness of him, the sweeping demographic changes he
represents (‘‘He’s black! Oh, my God, they’ve got the presidency now!’’) without
appearing uncouth enough to do so. </P>
<P>Memo to the morons: It doesn’t work, folks. Nobody is fooled. You are about
as subtle as Lady Gaga. </P>
<P>It is telling that the white candidate who was, in fact, <SPAN
class=italic>not</SPAN> born in the USA (Sen. John McCain was born in the Panama
Canal Zone, if anyone is interested) did not face these questions, while the
black one who was born in Hawaii has been unable to escape them. </P>
<P>This, even though Obama provided his birth certificate and its authenticity
has repeatedly been vouched for by Hawaiian officials. </P>
<P>This, even though, if there were the slightest chance he was ineligible for
the presidency, opposition researchers working for his opponents would have
shredded him like an old bank statement. </P>
<P>This, even though his Aug. 4, 1961 birth was noted by contemporaneous (memo
to the morons: that means it happened at the time) birth announcements in not
one, but two Hawaii newspapers. What’d he do? Jump in a time machine, zip back
to the ’60s and plant the notices? </P>
<P>Sorry. There I go getting snappish again. But it gets tiresome, you know?</P>
<P>Frankly, I wish Trump and his fellow birthers would just go ahead and call
Obama an N-word. Yes, it would be reprehensible and offensive. </P>
<P>But it would be a damn sight more honest, too.
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